Kamloops woman offered coupon after blade found in fruit snacks

A Kamloops woman is disappointed with a company’s lacklustre response to her discovery of a metal blade she found in a pack of fruit snacks intended for her three-year-old son.

Angela Veltri said she bought a bulk box of Welch’s Fruit Snacks from a Kamloops grocery store earlier this month and noticed one of them appeared to have been a double package that hadn’t been separated.

She didn’t think much of it until last week, when she was opening the pack for her son as she does with every package.

She told KTW she felt something hard inside the plastic package and when she opened it pulled out a four-inch metal blade.

The top of the blade was rounded and thinner than the bottom, which was sharp — appearing to have been broken off of some sort of sorting machine at the factory, Veltri suspected.

“Obviously [I] was just absolutely astonished,” Veltri said. “You don’t expect to find that in your kid’s fruit snacks, it was crazy.”

Veltri said she called the company immediately and was asked to send in some photos of the blade, which she did.

A company representative called her back saying they would send her a box to send back the blade and remaining product in along with some free coupons, Veltri said.

Veltri said she felt the letter and the coupons she received with the box didn’t fit the severity of the foreign object she found in the package.

“I think I was just looking for more of an apology,” she said, noting the letter read as though they were deflecting responsibility.

The letter from Welch’s reads: “We’re sorry to learn of your recent experience with Welch’s Fruit Snacks. This product is distributed for us by our licensees, Promotion in Motion, so we are notifying their quality assurance department of the problem.”

“The information you provided will be passed on to them. We appreciate your bringing this to our attention.”

She said the four coupons she received were two for 50 cents off and two for a free product valued at $5.99.

Given her experience, Veltri said she wants parents to be careful of objects that can get into factory sealed products.

Veltri said she will be sending the blade back to Welch’s as requested with the hope that they get to the bottom of how the blade managed to get into their product and ensure it doesn’t happen again, noting the situation could have been worse if someone else purchased the product.